30 second, handheld exposure.

Conventional wisdom says that you need to put the camera on a tripod if you’re going to make a long exposure photograph. The rule of thumb is 1/focal length is okay for handheld photography but anything longer needs some kind of support. Modern image stabilization (aka vibration reduction) technologies might give us an extra couple of stops leeway with this but if you really want a good image, you need to use a tripod.

Sometimes though, you want to be unconventional. The above photograph was shot hand held with a 30 second exposure time. That’s half a minute. To add to the experiment, I walked around a bit during that thirty seconds while holding the camera. The colors come from a few gelled speedlights that were on stands and fired by other photographers during the exposure however you don’t need to go that far. Any colored ambient light source can help. The particular location that this was taken in was pretty much completely dark with no ambient light filtering in.

The key is experimentation. Never be afraid to try new things. There’s really no downside to experimenting in photography and you may just stumble across something that works.

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